As I’m about to leave, she says, “Oh, do you know if Wilder got our application in for the Brunswick Food Festival? It was due yesterday. I reminded him last week.”
“He would have. I’ll get him to confirm with you.”
I have a sinking feeling he didn’t get the application in because that’s something he’d ask me to do, and he didn’t ask me. And I’m certain that’s not because I forgot.
This food festival is something Wilder’s been talking about for months. It’s Salty Girl’s chance to show off Gia’s mad skills and put the restaurant on the Brisbane food map, something I know Wilder wants so the club can maximise the business.
When I reach my car, I search for the food festival website on my phone and call the organiser.
He answers on the first ring, letting me know his name is Simon.
“Hi, Simon, I’m Scarlett. How are you today?” I put extra effort into sounding friendly. Not my forte in life. At all.
“Oh, I’m blessed, Scarlett. How are you?”
Blessed seems a little extra. Hopefully that means this will go in my favour.
“I’m gonna go with blessed, too, Simon. Such a nice way to phrase it.” I never imagined the day I’d tell someone I feel blessed.
“What can I do for you?”
“Well, this is a little awkward. Embarrassing, to be honest. My boss asked me to put our restaurant’s application in for the festival, and my memory is so bad at the moment due to family things I have going on that I can’t remember if I did or not. And Simon, I really, really need to have that application in, or I think I might lose my job. Would you have time to check for me, please?”
I wonder what my karma will be for this lie.
“Of course. What is the name of the restaurant?”
“Salty Girl. And thank you, Simon. I appreciate you taking the time to do this for me.” Who knew I could be so delightful?
Simon taps away on his computer, taking his sweet time before finally saying, “I regret to tell you that you do not have an application in, Scarlett.”
“Oh, wow.” Wow? What even are these words coming out of my mouth? “Umm, goodness, I hate to put you on the spot but is there any way we can get our application in now?”
Simon clears his throat like he’s about to deliver bad news. “Well, ah, it’s not usual practice—”
“I’m so sorry to do this to you, but honestly, I’m pretty sure I’m going to get fired over this, and my family really can’t afford for me to lose my job. Please, Simon, can you help me out?”
It’s not a lie. My family (me) can’t afford for me to lose my job. And honestly, Wilder could fire me. I mean, he blames my memory for so many things that I’m convinced aren’t my fault. He’ll likely blame this on me if I can’t get my new best friend Simon to help me out.
Simon turns silent, and I can imagine him warring with himself over what to do. I feel sorry for him. Really, I do. Well, maybe that’s a lie. Mostly I just feel like I really want him to say yes.
After the longest minute, he says, “Okay, Scarlett, I’ll help you out. I wouldn’t want you to lose your job.”
“Ohmigosh.” I run all those words together like a pro. Like all the girl squads do. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Hmm, three thank yous is maybe a little over the top. I should calm my shit down. “What do you need from me to make this happen?”
Simon spends the next twenty fucking minutes taking my details down and processing the application for me while I mentally kill Wilder for forgetting to handle his shit. I gush my extreme gratitude once again before finally ending the call and refraining from stabbing out a shitty text to my boss detailing how fucking much I want those twenty minutes of my life back and what I think of him for making me give them up.
But we have our application in.
Go me for being team player of the year.
Wilder owes me big time.
A text comes through as I turn the sound up on “Paradise City” and throw my car in Reverse. I definitely need some Gunners in my life today.
I quickly check the text in case it’s Wilder with another directive.
Phoebe: Please stop ignoring my calls. I want to see you.
I shove my phone back in my bag, adding an ignored text to the long list of shit sitting between my sister and me.
Hell will fucking freeze over before I agree to see her.
4
Wilder
“We made it happen,” Scarlett says just after 5:00 p.m. as we watch the staff finishing the set up for the event we’re hosting tonight.
“Yeah. How the fuck that happened, I’m not sure, but thanks for all your work on it.” I look at her. “And for running around to the other restaurants and to the bank.” I wouldn’t have managed today without her. She really came through for me, but then, she always does. She might throw down hostile negotiations half the fucking time, but she never fails to get shit done.
“Jesus,” she mutters after turning her gaze to the new tables that Chelsea helped me find today. She doesn’t say anything else before marching to the closest table and rearranging the flowers in the centre of it.
I watch as she fixes all the table centrepieces and then moves on to fiddle with the rest of the decorations in the room. It’s amusing watching her mutter to herself while working. Scarlett thinks I’m a control freak, and I probably am, but she is too. She’s never happy with any of Storm’s restaurant decorations if they’ve been done by someone else. She always gets in there and fixes them to how she wants them. That was the job Harlow originally brought her on board for, but these days her job is more about being my assistant manager. Not that we’ve formalised that, but it’s what she does.
“What the fuck is Scarlett doing?”
King moves next to me, asking after Scarlett. Those two have had words a few times when he’s been in town. She doesn’t have any time for him, but he’s developed a begrudging respect for her. King appreciates people who stand up for themselves, even if it irritates him. And Scarlett irritates the hell out of him.
“Making the restaurant look the way she wants it to,” I say, yanking my eyes from Scarlett, who’s still commanding my attention in ways that bother me.
She’s tied a knot in my shirt she’s wearing, revealing the tanned skin of her stomach. Skin I’ve seen before. Skin that should not affect me the way it is. I think it’s the sight of my shirt against it that’s causing this. Fuck, I don’t know, but my brain won’t move on from that sight.
King follows me into my office, and we catch up for a few minutes. He tells me his old lady is in a mood at the moment and suggested he should take the number of days he’s planning to stay in Brisbane and multiply them by three. I like Lily. I like how she’s calmed King a little. Before she came along, I didn’t know a thing about him. He would never have spent five minutes telling me about his family, and he sure as shit wouldn’t have pulled his phone out and shown me a photo of Cade, his eight-month-old son, when I asked how he was.
He puts his phone away and says, “Liam called. He didn’t find a lot of evidence here this morning. You got any ideas on who it might have been?”